Turkish pharmaceutical shipper charged in cancer-drug smuggling

By Chris Gillis|Monday, August 18, 2014

Sabahaddin Akman, owner of the Istanbul, Turkey-based firm Ozay Pharmaceuticals, pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling misbranded and adulterated cancer treatment drugs into the United States, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which helped investigate the case.
Akman pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis, where he initially shipped his illegal drugs. The drugs did not meet the FDA’s standards and had not been approved for U.S. distribution.
The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations coordinated a “complex, multi-layered international investigation” that led to Akman’s arrest in Puerto Rico in January 2014, the agency said Friday. The investigation identified Akman and his company as a source of Altuzan, the Turkish version of the cancer treatment drug Avastin.
“These criminals exploited our most vulnerable patients when they arranged for their illicit drugs to be brought into the United States and used to treat cancer patients,” said Philip J. Walsky, acting director of the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations, in a statement.
The FDA noted Akman and an employee, Ozkan Semizoglu, obtained the illicit drugs and then used shipping labels to hide the illegal shipments, including customs declarations falsely describing the contents as “gifts.” The two men also broke down large drug shipments into several smaller packages to reduce the likelihood of seizures by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency said.